What's Happening

At The Farm

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With one day of sun forecast for the week, we thought about the strawberries and the weeds and went to work. The berries hate rain when they are ripe. If they get wet for a while, they turn into fuzz-balls. And then the rest of the small berries rot too. Before long, it's one big patch of mold. As for the weeds - "when the sun is shining, they are dying."

So, we we sent out an email on Monday at 7am, encouraging people to come pick. We figured some people would be able to come and a bunch of berries would get taken out of the field, and that would help. While people were picking we would be cultivating as many crops as possible. Everything done all at once, right?

By 8am there was a full parking lot of cars and pickers in the field. It stayed like that for the rest of the day; People just kept coming. And picking. Then things went nuts; By 5pm the parking lot was full and the cars were lined up on Hulst road. There were pickers everywhere. Now we were getting reports that one of the patches had no more ripe berries. By 7pm the other patch was clean too. Literally every ripe berry was picked from the fields. Not everyone got berries. We never expected so many people would pick on a week day. I guess one sunny day can have that effect. We kept the tractors and hoes rolling and cleaned up tomatoes, onions, corn, and on and on.

Then, right on cue, on and off rain from Tuesday thru Friday left us shifting from weeding to planting; from picking to waiting. Meanwhile, the early summer crops began ripening with all of the good moisture and moderate warmth. Leaving us, at weeks' end with a cooler full of food and more ripe berries to pick from a clean field. We will hope for more sun in the coming week to make the whole thing work a little smoother, but all in all we are glad that we got through this one, mostly okay.